


My son and my Patrick

by earlgreytea68



Series: Schrodingerverse [7]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: COVID, Coronavirus, M/M, Pandemics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:42:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29454741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Christmas in a time of Covid.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Series: Schrodingerverse [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687264
Comments: 39
Kudos: 78





	My son and my Patrick

**Author's Note:**

> One thing my experience has taught me is every place is treating this virus differently. So Patrick's experience in this fic is probably not true to California's approach, but it is an accurate depiction of my state's approach, since I was basically in Patrick's position and some of the things in this fic definitely came from my life. 
> 
> Not the sex scenes. 
> 
> This fic was for me cathartic to write. However, I know it might be triggering for some, so please know that this fic's inciting incident is a positive Covid test.
> 
> Thank you to carbon for giving it a makes-sense check for me and proofreading my typos!

“But I really want to do it!” Pete whines.

Patrick sweeps steadily. “Uh-huh.”

“I really, _really_ want to do it.”

Patrick dumps the dustbin contents into the garbage. “Uh-huh.”

“Patriiiiiiiiiiick.” Pete flings himself dramatically over the back of the couch, landing out of sight of Patrick in the kitchen.

“You know,” Patrick remarks, putting the broom away, “I thought I only had one ten-year-old to deal with in this house.”

“You’re the one who says he’s just like me,” Pete rejoins, his voice muffled.

Patrick comes around the couch to confirm that Pete is speaking directly into the couch cushion. He sighs and says, “Pete—”

Pete flips over to face him. “We have done nothing but hide in this house for nine months.”

“It’s a _global pandemic_. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing.”

“People are out there going to fucking Disneyland, Patrick.”

“We are not going to Disneyland,” Patrick replies staunchly.

“I don’t want to go to Disneyland. I want to go do this one tiny little thing. That’s it. I just want to go film a segment with Carson Daly for New Year’s Eve like it’s 2014 again and there’s no pandemic and we can just do this little tiny thing like it’s a normal year. That’s all I want to do. You think Carson Daly is going to give me Covid?”

Patrick regards Pete dubiously. “I don’t know, are you going to make out with Carson Daly?”

“You don’t have to make out with someone to get Covid from them.”

“You’re not really making your case here, Wentz.”

“I never made out with Carson Daly,” Pete says. “Did you think I made out with Carson Daly?”

“You would’ve been a pretty couple.”

“Said Carson Daly about me and you,” Pete corrects him. “They’re going to test everyone for Covid before letting us near each other. It’s going to be the safest place on the entire planet. _Please_ can I do it?”

Patrick is genuinely torn. There _are_ no safe places on this fucking planet anymore, and maybe he’s starting to develop genuine issues about ever letting Pete and Tennyson out of the controlled cocoon of their house, and Pete just wants to do this one small thing, and Patrick knows that Pete has let him bully them into being much more locked down than Pete would have been, and Patrick wants so badly to just be blasé and casual the way so many other people seem to be about this virus, like, _go out, babe, live your life, it’s all cool_. The idea gives him a vague panicky feeling, like stage fright in the early days. It makes him want to grab Pete and hide behind him and never let him go.

He inhales in sharp frustration and then Tennyson comes in and drops his iPad on the coffee table and says, “The Zoom’s not working.”

“Ugh, does the router need to be restarted again?” Pete says, and rolls himself off the couch. “I think we need a new router.”

Another thing for them to think about, Patrick thinks. Another breach of the fortress. It’s been nine months. Patrick could have gotten himself pregnant and been knocking on the door of the baby’s birth, if he’d had the right equipment. Instead he’s just descending into deeper and less productive bouts of confusion and despair. He’s getting worse at this pandemic, not better. Shouldn’t practice make perfect? That had always seemed to help the few times the band had actually bothered to do it.

Tennyson looks at him and says, “We also need more cookies.”

Yeah, Patrick agrees with that assessment whole-heartedly.

***

Patrick sits in bed eating cookies he went to the store to get because cookies are a thing he can control. Of course, he exposed himself to a deadly virus in order to get to exert the control over the cookies, so he’s not sure he actually made his point there. He’s also not sure he can make any argument against Pete doing this Carson Daly New Year’s Eve thing if he keeps going to the grocery store for cookies.

He’s watching one of Pete’s endless Hallmark Christmas movies on low volume because Pete is having a speakerphone conversation with his mother on the other side of the bedroom, something about Christmas Zoom plans and how much everything sucks and no, the gifts haven’t arrived and probably won’t arrive on time but it’s not a big thing, they’ll do it later, et cetera, et cetera. Patrick has had the exact same conversation with his mother. He wants to stop talking about Christmas now. It’s bad enough to be in the middle of a pandemic, obviously, and bad enough not to spend Christmas with their families. It’s even worse to be a Chicago boy spending Christmas in L.A., where the weather is all wrong and the lights are strung on palm trees. Patrick’s never liked L.A. very much and he detests it at Christmas and he’s been trapped in this place he detests for a really, really long time. Sometimes even another day of this pandemic feels absolutely unbearable to him.

Pete says, “Yup, love you, too, I’ll have Tennyson call you tomorrow,” and ends the call and tosses the phone in the general vicinity of the wireless charger on Pete’s nightstand. Then he says feelingly, “Motherfucker,” and crawls into bed. “You are eating cookies in bed and I want you so bad right now.”

“You want my cookies,” Patrick says.

“Oh, yeah, baby, talk dirty some more,” Pete says, draping over him and licking crumbs off Patrick’s lips. That shouldn’t be as hot as it is.

“Hey,” Patrick mumbles into Pete’s mouth, letting him haphazardly put the cookies on the nightstand so he can straddle him more fully. “You know.”

“I know what?” Pete asks, and bites Patrick’s lower lip, tugs.

Patrick tightens his hands on Pete’s hips to pull him hard against him, into a better position. He needs this sex, he thinks desperately. He needs this moment of connection to remind him he’s not alone, to pull him up out of this quagmire he’s sinking into.

“Oh, fuck, yes,” murmurs Pete, and kisses him with, frankly, an extravagant amount of tongue.

“You know I’m not the boss of you, right?” Patrick manages, and takes Pete’s shirt off of him.

“Baby, you can _absolutely_ be the boss of me, tell me how you want me,” says Pete, and spreads his hands along Patrick’s ribcage, under his t-shirt.

“I mean,” Patrick gasps, as Pete grinds down on him. “I mean.”

Pete nips at his lips. “Tell me how you want me,” he whispers again.

“I want you _mine_ ,” Patrick says suddenly, fiercely, because this is blindingly true. In the sea of people who could kill him, he’s got this one person who he wants to be _his_.

“Do it,” Pete says, and lets Patrick flatten him onto his back.

Sometimes, in the right mood, Patrick wants this badly, to add his marks to Pete’s tattoos, to bite and bruise, and he wants it in return, too. He marks Pete up as his while Pete hisses and pulls at his hair and digs his fingers in. Bruises on his thighs in the shape of Pete’s fingerprints, Patrick can’t believe how lucky he is. They don’t always fuck with so much edge to it but sometimes, Patrick has found, when it comes to Pete, he just wants to feel _used_ , so that there can’t be any denying that he wants Pete and Pete wants him back.

Patrick doesn’t know who takes who apart. It’s probably mutual. They shatter into pieces together, Pete with a flailing hand knocking the cookies off their precarious nightstand perch, Patrick reaching up to grab the headboard to stop it knocking so loudly against the wall, Pete whispering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, keep doing that, Jesus Christ, Patrick, Patrick, Patrick—” until Patrick kisses him because Pete’s forgetting how to whisper. Pete kisses clumsy, uncoordinated, panting, and Patrick stops moving abruptly.

Patrick’s the rhythm section, let’s face it. Pete whines and twitches, trying to get back on track, hands tugging, saying desperately, “Patrickpatrickpatrick—”

“Hey,” Patrick says, dodging the kiss Pete is aiming for. He looks down at Pete’s unfocused, blown-pupil eyes, his messy tangle of hair, his kiss-plump mouth. _Mine_ , he thinks. “Come,” he says simply.

Pete’s eyes widen in shock and he does, which might be the hottest thing Patrick’s ever seen, so he follows him right into it, pressing his forehead against Pete’s shoulder, trying to catch his breath.

“ _Jesus_ , what was that?” manages Pete between heaving breaths. One of his hands is on the back of Patrick’s neck now, a light, grounding touch.

“Did you like it?” Patrick gasps.

“Um, _yes_ ,” says Pete, and kisses Patrick’s sweaty temple. “Did _you_ like it?”

“I did it, didn’t I?”

Pete hums and kisses his temple again and then wiggles out from under him. He goes to the bathroom and comes back with a facecloth and does the clean-up. Patrick, spent, lays there like a lump and lets him handle everything. He loves Pete a lot. He’s also very tired now.

Pete gets into bed and turns off the light and turns off the television and snuggles down. He stretches and sighs and says, satisfied, “Ah, fuck, I needed that, thank you.” He kisses the tip of Patrick’s nose. “Sorry, I turned your movie off, but I bet it was going to end with them getting together on Christmas Eve.”

“I was trying to tell you,” Patrick says, “I’m not the boss of you.”

“Patrick, you just wore me out, are you trying to have a complicated kink negotiation right now, because I don’t have the energy to—”

“No. The Carson Daly thing.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I swear to you, I never made out with Carson Daly.”

Patrick frowns. “No, not that. I mean, if you want to do this New Year’s Eve thing, you should do it. I’m not the boss of you. I don’t _control_ you.”

There’s a moment of silence. “You don’t control me, and I don’t control you, but I like to think we make decisions together. Right?”

“Yeah. Always.” Patrick agrees with that.

“Right. So I’m not doing this New Year’s Eve thing if you’re not on board.”

It is, in the grand scheme of things, such a little thing. Such a tiny thing. And Pete’s been so good for him, so indulgent of Patrick’s hysteria. Patrick says thickly, “I’m not sure I’m handling this pandemic well.”

Pete shifts closer to him, curls into him. “Sweetheart. I don’t think there’s any good way to handle this pandemic.”

Pete’s hair is all in his mouth and Patrick wouldn’t have it any other way. “You’ll be so safe and careful, right? Like, masks and distancing and staying outside and all of it. Right?”

“Yes. Absolutely. _Two_ masks and, like, _twelve_ feet, and everything. I swear.”

Patrick closes his eyes, exhausted. He’s just exhausted. “If you want to do it, you should do it.”

“Let’s talk about it again tomorrow,” Pete says after a moment.

“I love you very much,” Patrick says drowsily. “Very, very much.”

“I know,” Pete says, and kisses his shoulder. “I love you, too. Go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

***

On Tuesday, dinnertime is chaotic, and Patrick honestly doesn’t understand why, like, shouldn’t they have a grip on dinnertime by this point in the pandemic? But it always feels like a disorganized rush of last-minute food prep and tripping over Bella winding underfoot and fighting with Tennyson about the rule “no tablet at the table” that has been a rule forever but Tennyson fights about it every night and out of nowhere Pete says, “Oh, huh, my test results came back. I can send them to NBC to get the all-clear for the filming now.”

“Dad, don’t you think we should have this entire week off?” Tennyson complains. “Like, it’s stupid I have to go to school tomorrow still, it’s almost Christmas. Online school is stupid, we never get any time off.”

Patrick would also like to petition for time off. He’s saying, “Don’t knock your water over, please—” because Tennyson’s dramatic pose is close to the glass when Pete says, “Oh, fuck.”

Patrick and Tennyson both look over at him.

Pete is blinking at his phone. “It’s positive.”

Bella whines at the sudden stillness in the kitchen.

“It’s what?” Patrick says blankly.

“It’s positive.” Pete holds the phone out to him. “Doesn’t it say positive?”

Patrick frowns. It does indeed say, _You have tested positive for the covid-19 variant of the coronavirus._ And then, underneath that, _If you are not experiencing symptoms, please begin isolating immediately and remain isolated for ten days_. “This can’t be right,” Patrick says, staring at the phone.

“You’re sick?” Tennyson asks, and the panic is so thick in his voice it’s tangible in the air.

“No,” Pete says immediately. “No. I’m not sick. I’m fine.”

“It says you tested positive.” Patrick realizes Tennyson is reading over his shoulder and quickly gives the phone back to Pete. “It says you’re sick.”

“I’m not sick,” Pete insists. “I’m fine. I feel absolutely fine.”

“Are you going to get sick?” asks Tennyson, wide-eyed. He looks at Patrick. “Is Dad going to get sick?”

Tennyson is breathing fast, his panic clearly amping up. “Hey,” Patrick says, automatically trying to be soothing. “No. No one’s getting sick. Everyone’s fine.”

“How can you say no one’s getting sick?” There’s an hysterical edge to Tennyson’s voice. “You’ve had us locked up in this house for months because you said it’s too dangerous to go out and now Dad’s sick!”

Pete takes a step forward and Patrick instinctively puts a hand out to keep him away. “Maybe not,” he says hesitantly. He feels like an asshole but also, like, isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? Fuck, what are they supposed to _do_?

“Oh, right,” Pete says faintly. “Yeah. Right. Look, kiddo, I’m sure the test is wrong. Where would I even get this virus from? I don’t _go_ anywhere.”

“You went to have the test done,” Tennyson points out accusingly. “You go to the store. The other day you went to get coffee and donuts.”

Tennyson’s right about all of that. At some point, even Patrick stopped being vigilant, started doing things like venturing forth for food, like, it seemed impossible not to at least do _that_. And now look what he’s done, he let them relax their standards and Pete is sick.

Pete looks between the two of them. “I’m not sick,” he says. “I’m really not sick.” There’s a beat of silence. Then he says, “That said, I probably shouldn’t eat dinner with all of you until we sort this out.”

“Oh, right,” Patrick says, because…that makes sense. Hang on, does it make sense? What does any of this mean?

“Where will you eat?” Tennyson asks.

“You can eat in the studio,” Patrick suggests.

“The studio is your space, I’m not taking it away from you.”

“It isn’t _my_ space—” Patrick protests, because theoretically they’re both musicians but it’s true that it tends to be Patrick who uses the studio.

“I’ll just like, I don’t know, maybe I’ll use the spare room.”

Patrick lifts his eyebrows. “The t-shirt room?” Because that room is full of boxes of old merch encompassing the entire history of the band.

“Look, you’re the one who’s always saying I should go through and organize it. Maybe there’s no time like the present.”

“We are nine months into a quarantine and you’ve never wanted to tackle that room before,” Patrick points out drily.

“I’ll eat in the t-shirt room,” Pete announces, and makes himself a plate, and waves cheerfully, and goes upstairs.

Patrick looks at Tennyson, who gives him a terrified look in response.

“He’s okay,” Patrick says, because this is his job, isn’t it? “He’s totally fine, and he’s going to be totally fine, and this is all stupid and silly, okay?”

Tennyson swallows. He does not look like he believes Patrick for a second, and Patrick doesn’t blame him, considering that Patrick is the one who’s spent the entire pandemic trying to impart the seriousness of their situation, Patrick is the one who’s always saying over and over how dangerous the virus is and how much they need to avoid getting it. He wishes Tennyson listened to him less.

Patrick sits at the table and says gently, “Hey. Wordsworth.” That gets him a little bit of a smile. “We haven’t gotten to have a dinner together where we complain about your dad in a long time. So here’s our chance.”

“I’m not very hungry,” Tennyson says.

“We can have cookies for dinner,” Patrick decides. “I’ll play Fortnite with you.” Fuck all of the good rules of parenting. “And you don’t have to go to school until next year,” he decides, because why not go for it?

Not even that really makes Tennyson smile, but at least he does go and play Fortnite with Patrick.

***

Patrick handles bedtime, which is not unheard of but is certainly unusual. Pete is fond of the bedtime ritual, likes the time with Tennyson, and it’s a time in their days that Patrick tries not to intrude on. But Pete calls his cell phone while he’s watching Tennyson play Fortnite (Patrick died very early) and says, “Um, I think maybe you should do bedtime.”

Which both makes sense and is very stupid, Patrick thinks.

Tennyson is clearly terrified and of course having Patrick do bedtime doesn’t make him feel any better. Patrick tries to cheer him up, keeps up a running commentary of silliness for his benefit, doing his best Pete Wentz impression, but he gets nowhere. Bella curls up beside Tennyson, her head on Tennyson’s hip, and cries like her heart is breaking, too.

“Good night,” Patrick says heartily, and Tennyson gives him a disbelieving look.

Patrick goes to the t-shirt room and knocks on the door.

Pete cracks it a sliver, peers out at Patrick.

“Can we talk?” Patrick asks. He’s very tired, and he kind of just wants Pete. Like, he’s barely been holding it together lately, and now he’s been deprived of the main structure of his support system.

“Put a mask on,” Pete says, and closes the door.

Patrick sighs and goes in search of a mask, and then he sits on the floor a safe distance away from the door and calls Pete’s cell phone. “I’m very far away and all masked up,” he tells Pete when he answers.

Pete opens the door and sits on the floor in the t-shirt room, more than six feet away from Patrick.

“I am not happy about this,” Patrick says flatly.

“Do you think I’m overjoyed?” Pete counters.

“This is stupid. Come to bed.”

“I can’t come to bed. I just tested positive for Covid.”

“If you have Covid, don’t you think you already infected me? Your tongue was so far down my throat the other night, it was practically _in_ my lungs.”

“Is Tennyson sleeping yet?”

“Tennyson isn’t going to _sleep_ tonight, are you out of your mind? Tennyson is fucking terrified because I idiotically made sure to tell him over and over again how incredibly dangerous this virus is.”

“I’m fine,” Pete says. “I feel absolutely fine.”

“Where did you even _get_ Covid?” Patrick grumbles.

“I’m thinking maybe it’s a false positive,” Pete says. “I signed up for two more tests tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Patrick brightens at the prospect. “Maybe! Do you think so?”

“I don’t know. But until I know, we’ve got to act like I have Covid.”

“Pete,” Patrick complains.

“You have _asthma_ ,” Pete reminds him.

“Fuck,” says Patrick, and really hates his life.

And then thinks: It could be worse. Of course it could be worse. Pete could be in a hospital on a ventilator. And he’s not. He’s right here, safe and sound, with not a single Covid symptom. Like, Patrick’s life is so good right now.

It doesn’t feel that way when he drags himself into his empty bed. Patrick has never, ever slept in this bed alone.

He’s not going to start now, he decides. He gets up and goes down the hall to Tennyson’s room and whispers, “Psst.”

As expected, Tennyson’s eyes open right away.

“Want to sleep in my room tonight?” Patrick asks.

“ _Yes_ ,” says Tennyson, and Patrick helps him gather up the very particular arrangement of pillows and blankets that Tennyson likes to sleep with. Bella trots after them, looking interested in the adventure.

Patrick gets Tennyson all set up on Pete’s side of the bed. Bella finishes sniffing all around the bedroom, pronounces it safe, and jumps up on the bed to curl next to Tennyson.

Patrick shuts off the light and slides into bed and whispers to Tennyson, “He’s going to be fine, we’re all going to be fine.”

“We’re okay,” Tennyson whispers back.

“Yup,” Patrick agrees.

Tennyson falls asleep. He’s never been cursed with Pete’s complicated sleep patterns, not even as a baby.

Patrick lays awake for hours.

***

The only reason Patrick knows he falls asleep is because he wakes up. He wakes up to Bella sprawled heavily across his legs and Tennyson clinging to him. Patrick’s very hot and slightly suffocated. Well, at least he’s not in the bed alone.

He manages to wriggle his way out of Tennyson’s hold. Bella snorts in annoyance and harrumphs over to the other side of the bed.

 _Yeah, life is rough_ , Patrick thinks in her direction.

He finds his glasses and goes downstairs, yawning. It’s much earlier than he usually wakes up and he expects to have the house to himself. He’s surprised to find Pete in the kitchen, brooding over a plate of cookies. He looks up as Patrick enters, and then says, “Oh! Masks! We need masks!”

“I thought you’d still be hiding in the t-shirt room,” Patrick says, as Pete dashes out of the room.

“I thought you’d still be sleeping,” Pete hisses back to him as he runs up the stairs. “You’re never up this early.”

“How was I supposed to sleep?” Patrick asks, following him at a safe distance.

“Can you get a mask, please?” Pete replies, and darts into the t-shirt room.

Patrick sighs and goes to the bedroom and finds a mask. Tennyson sleeps on. Bella looks at him briefly, then goes back to snoring.

Pete is sitting on the floor just inside his doorway, like he was last night. Patrick dutifully sits six feet away. At this distance, and with the masks, he can’t really see much about Pete. Does he look like he’s getting sick? Is he pale? Does he look thinner? This is all ridiculous, his imagination is running wild, he needs to get a grip, he’s becoming hysterical.

“How do you feel?” he asks, and he hears the anxiety thrumming in his voice.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Pete says calmly. “Seriously. I feel great, dude.”

“Yeah?” That seems too good to be true. People _die_ of this, or stop being able to taste food, or can’t get out of bed for weeks, or—

“I wouldn’t lie about it. I’d tell you if I felt sick.”

“Would you?” Patrick is dubious. He knows Pete doesn’t want him to worry, and this is already worry enough.

“Yes. I promise, how’s that? I _promise_. But you have to promise if I start to feel sick you won’t run in here like you’re Clara fucking Barton and try to mop my brow and shit.”

“Clara Barton?”

“Yeah, she, like, founded the Red Cross.”

“I thought you’d go with Florence Nightingale.”

Pete shrugs. “Her, too.”

There’s a moment of silence. Pete really _does_ seem okay, Patrick has to admit.

“Look,” Pete continues, “I’m going to go get my tests and maybe they’ll come back negative and it’ll be okay.”

“Should I be tested, too?” Patrick asks. “Like, I probably should, huh? If you’ve got this, I probably have it, too, and I guess we should know? Right?”

“That’s a good idea,” Pete says. “And I can go again with you!”

Patrick is amused. “How many tests are you going to take?”

“I don’t know. It’ll make me feel better if… I don’t know.”

Pete sounds uncertain for the first time, and Patrick stops being selfish for a second. Like, if _he’s_ scared, how much more scared must Pete be?

“I think you’re fine,” Patrick assures him staunchly.

“Yeah,” Pete agrees, nodding. “Yeah, totally. Everything is good.”

***

Everything is _not_ good.

Patrick is on the phone with the Department of Health and he is _not_ okay.

The Department of Health called him. Contact tracing.

“So,” the person says when Patrick answers, “you’ve come into contact with someone who recently tested positive for Covid.”

“Yes,” Patrick confirms. “I live with him. But he also just tested negative, so—”

“That doesn’t matter,” the person cuts him off.

“That doesn’t matter?” Patrick echoes, surprised.

“The negative test doesn’t matter. It’s wrong.”

Patrick considers. “Maybe the positive test is wrong—”

“The positive tests are never wrong. Did he get a rapid test?”

“Yes—”

“Those tests are wrong sixty percent of the time.”

Patrick blinks. “That means they’re wrong more often than they’re right…”

“Yeah, they’re not good.”

“So why would you use them?” Patrick is bewildered.

“They’re better than nothing.”

“Are they, though?” asks Patrick uncertainly.

“So, I just spoke to your husband, and—”

“He’s not my—” Patrick is so discombobulated by everything happening that his protest is weak enough that the person talks right over him.

“—he’s not experiencing any symptoms.”

“Right, that’s why we thought maybe the negative test—”

“Are you experiencing any symptoms?”

“No,” Patrick says.

“Okay, well, that’s good. So it’s you and your husband and I think he mentioned the two of you have a son living with you?”

“Yes,” Patrick confirms. It’s probably not worth it to correct the husband thing, right? Like, who cares?

“Okay, so, your husband should stay isolated in a separate room as much as possible. You should not eat any meals together. If you cannot avoid being in the same room, please make sure you wear masks, stay six feet apart, properly ventilate the room, and don’t spend more than fifteen minutes together. You and your son should also try to stay away from each other as much as possible.”

Patrick thinks of waking up with Tennyson fastened to him. “He’s _ten_.”

“If you have to be in the same space as him, you should wear masks, ventilate the room, keep six feet apart.”

Patrick is dizzy, wondering how that’s going to work. Tennyson is _ten_ , and he’s been used to spending every minute with one or the other of them lately. He’s also a Wentz who takes after his dad: he’s big on physical touch, on finding comfort through hugs and cuddles. Now they’ve careened into this high-stress mess and Patrick won’t even be to make their kid feel any better to help him through it. And it really all is on him, because Pete’s got to stay even farther away. Patrick’s head feels like a jigsaw puzzle of moving parts. He says, “Okay, so, we’ll—”

“Your husband will have to isolate for ten days, and then you and your son will have to isolate for an additional ten days after that.”

“ _Ten days_?” Patrick doesn’t know why that didn’t occur to him, because obviously Covid has been all about two weeks or whatever, but Patrick hasn’t actually internalized the math of it until that moment. “Christmas is three days away.”

“Yeah, have a good holiday!” the Department of Health official says cheerfully.

***

Because Patrick is a coward, he hangs up the phone and immediately Facetimes Pete.

“Yo,” Pete answers.

“Did you talk to the Department of Health?” Patrick demands.

Pete grows very serious, as serious as Patrick’s ever seen him. “Yeah.”

“What did they tell you?”

“To isolate for ten days—”

“ _Ten days_. Pete, Christmas is in three!”

“Yeah, I know—”

“And!” Patrick feels like he’s growing increasingly hysterical. “Do you know what they told _me_? That I have to stay away from Tennyson! He’s _ten_. And he’s freaking out. And I can’t—”

“He’s freaking out?” Pete cuts in calmly. “Or you?”

Patrick gulps at air. He’s maybe freaking out. He was freaking out days ago when nothing was happening, feeling like everything was desperately unbearable, and now it feels like a straight-up freefall. He bangs his head against the wall behind him and says glumly, “I’m freaking out.”

“You’ve got this,” Pete says soothingly.

“Do I?” Patrick looks pleadingly at the phone. “I don’t feel like I do.”

“Of course you do. You’re going to be fine. Tennyson’s going to be fine. I’m going to be fine. We’re all going to be fine.”

It feels impossible. But Patrick doesn’t want to say that. Pete looks so steadily confident of him and Patrick doesn’t want to destroy that.

“Say it, Patrick,” Pete says firmly. “We’re all going to be fine.”

“Pete—”

“Say it out loud.”

“Is this something you learned in therapy?” Patrick asks.

“Uh-huh. Say it.”

“We’re all going to be fine,” Patrick repeats obediently. He’s not sure if it makes him feel better or not.

“Want to have phone sex?” asks Pete.

And Patrick laughs. Okay, now he, against all odds, feels better, just like that. “No,” he mock-grumbles. “I’ve got to go talk to our son about Christmas.”

“I’ll do that with you,” Pete says. “I’m not going to make you do that alone. Carry in my face on your phone.”

***

Tennyson is curled up reading a book on the couch, Bella right next to him, and even though Tennyson’s hair and eyes are both much lighter than Pete’s, he looks painfully like him when he looks up at Patrick from under his shaggy bangs. Patrick feels like he’s been the recipient of that look many times in his life, disturbing the book world Pete’s fallen into with some kind of real-world thing Pete’s going to hate.

“Oh, no,” Tennyson says. “Why are you wearing a mask?”

“Okay,” Patrick says heartily, sitting down a fair distance from Tennyson. “It’s only for a little while.”

“Patrick,” Pete says from the phone, “whatever that tone of voice is, don’t use it, it’s terrifying.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” Patrick sighs. He is just not the hearty, cheerful parent. Sue him.

“What is going on?” Tennyson asks with dread. “Just give it to my straight. Is Dad going to the hospital?”

“No, I’m not going to the hospital,” Pete says. “I’m absolutely _fine_. Okay, change of plans. Come upstairs and see me. Tennyson, get a mask.” Pete ends the Facetime.

Tennyson looks across at Patrick. “How bad is this?”

“Not bad,” Patrick says falteringly, and Tennyson looks alarmed, and Patrick thinks that he’s failing with this. _Get a grip_ , he tells himself firmly, and tries again. “Look, we’re all fine, and healthy, and it’s all okay. We’ve just got to be inconvenienced for a little while. It’s not a big thing. Let’s go see your dad.”

Tennyson heaves one of his specialized heavy sighs, puts his book aside, and gets to his feet. Bella jumps off the bed and pads behind them as they go upstairs. Tennyson ducks into his room for a mask, and then he settles on the floor six feet away from where Pete is sitting on the floor just inside the t-shirt room door. When Patrick sits even farther down the hallway, Tennyson looks over his shoulder at him, surprised. Then he looks at Pete and says, “Yeah, no, what’s going on?”

“Alright,” Pete says, “so because of my positive test, I have to stay isolated from the rest of you, to make sure I don’t make you guys sick.”

“Okay,” says Tennyson slowly. “So that means you have to stay all alone in that room?”

Pete nods.

“For how long?”

“For ten days,” Pete says bravely, not even flinching over it.

Tennyson is silent for a moment. Then he says, “But Christmas is in three days.”

“Yeah,” Pete says. “Look, it’s not—”

“That means you can’t have Christmas?” Tennyson exclaims.

“I can have Christmas! I just can’t have it in the room with you!”

“ _Dad_!” Tennyson whines. “We were going to make Christmas cookies! You said we could! You bought us the ingredients! And how are we going to open presents if we can’t even see each other!”

“Santa’s still going to come,” Pete says by way of comfort. “He’ll still come and—”

“I’m not worried about _Santa_ ,” Tennyson protests. “I’m worried about not getting to spend Christmas with my _dad_.” Tennyson cuts himself off abruptly, his voice thick with tears.

“I know,” Pete says softly. “I know. But I’m right here and we can talk like this and we can have Christmas later—”

“That is not the _same_ ,” Tennyson cries. “Patrick, tell him it’s not the same!”

“It’s not the same,” Patrick agrees, “but it’s what we have to—”

“I hate this,” Tennyson says. “I _hate_ this.” He jumps to his feet and stomps down the hallway and slams his bedroom door.

Patrick looks at Pete. At least the masks still allow their eyes to meet. He says, “We didn’t even get to the part where _I_ can’t bake the Christmas cookies or open the presents with him, either.”

Pete sighs and flops backward onto the floor, and Patrick hears him huff out, “Mother _fuck_ er.”

Patrick agrees silently.

***

When Patrick knocks on Tennyson’s door, the response is “ _Go away_!”

So at least Patrick knows he’s still alive in there.

Patrick leans his head against the door and says softly, “Hey. Longfellow. Can I please talk to you?”

Tennyson is silent for a long moment, then responds sullenly, “What?”

Patrick opens the door. Bella greets him enthusiastically. Tennyson does not. Patrick says, “Are you hungry?”

Tennyson glares at him from his bed. “No. I don’t want to hear about how this is all fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Patrick says. “It fucking sucks.”

Tennyson nods, wary, like he knows there’s a trick coming. “But?” he prompts.

“But your dad’s totally fine and he’s not in the hospital fighting for his life so it could be worse,” says Patrick.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tennyson says, unimpressed. “It still sucks.”

It does. Patrick’s been giving himself this same pep talk and it hasn’t persuaded him yet, so he doesn’t know why it would persuade Tennyson.

“Everything’s been stupid all year but at least we were okay,” Tennyson sniffles. “Now everything’s stupid and we’re not even okay.”

“I know,” Patrick agrees.

“And it’s Christmas, Patrick! It was already going to be a stupid Christmas and now look at it!”

“I know,” Patrick agrees again. He doesn’t know what else to say: Tennyson is absolutely right.

Tennyson huffs a sigh and collapses onto his side. His hair is too long. All of their hair is too long in this pandemic. Patrick makes Pete play barber and cut Patrick’s hair every so often, and Pete’s not bad at it, but Pete has embraced the length and Tennyson has gone all floppy-haired, his too-long bangs covering his eyes. “Can I sleep in your bed again?” he asks in a small voice.

And it kills Patrick – absolutely kills him – to say, “No.”

Tennyson stares at him, betrayed. “What?”

“We’re not supposed to—We’re supposed to stay away from each other, too.”

“ _What_?” says Tennyson. “You and me?”

Patrick nods.

“So _no one_ can make Christmas cookies with me?” Tennyson shouts.

“We’ll make Christmas cookies later—”

“Stop saying that, that is _not the same_ , ugh.” Tennyson rolls over to present Patrick with his back.

And Patrick makes a decision then and there. He Facetimes Pete as he marches to their bedroom, grabbing pillows and blankets off their bed.

“Do you have a problem,” he asks when Pete’s answered, “if I sleep on the floor in the hallway outside Tennyson’s bedroom and I wear my mask and we keep his bedroom window open?”

Pete is silent for a second. “That bad, huh?”

“Pete, he is ten fucking years old and he has to be alone on Christmas, while worried about you and worried about me and fuck everything about this situation but especially fuck the fact that we’re doing this to a _ten-year-old_.”

“ _We’re_ not doing it—” Pete begins gently.

“You know what, fuck you, too,” Patrick snaps at him suddenly. “Fuck you for being so fucking calm about this. Aren’t you angry? Aren’t you pissed off? Aren’t you freaked out of your mind?”

Pete scowls. “Of course I am, but what good would it do me to add to this? How would that help Tennyson deal with this, if he understood how much I fucking hate this? How would it help _you_ , if I told you how much I miss you and how much I just want to get into bed with you and not get out, maybe ever again? Is that better, Patrick? Do you feel better? I am fucking furious with myself that I wanted to go do something so stupidly selfish as some New Year’s Eve thing and if I hadn’t wanted to do that, I would have never had the test and we’d be having a perfectly normal Christmas right now, like, I am well aware that this is all my fault, trust me, I am beating myself up over it, but I don’t see what good it’s going to do me to have a tantrum about it, do you?”

Pete voicing everything Patrick’s been thinking deflates Patrick a little bit. Like, it’s not satisfying to yell that stuff at Pete now that Pete’s yelled it first.

Patrick sits heavily on their bed and looks at Pete, who looks haggard and tired. “I’m sorry,” Patrick says.

“For what?” Pete asks wearily.

“For thinking that this is all your fault.”

“It _is_ ,” Pete agrees.

“It’s not. Don’t beat yourself up over it. It’s not. You wanted to do something perfectly normal, after I’ve kept you locked up for so long, like, it’s not your fault, Pete. I’m not angry at you.” Patrick realizes the truth of this as he says it. “I’m angry at everything else, but I’m not angry at you.”

Pete looks at him for a second through their intermediary screens. He says, hopeful, “You’re not?”

Patrick shakes his head.

Pete sniffles and looks away and says, “Okay, good,” and clears his throat.

“How do you feel?” Patrick asks, studying him.

Pete manages to laugh a little. “Fine. I feel fine.”

“You look exhausted.”

“Just the usual Pete Wentz exhaustion. Not Covid.”

“Do you want to sleep in the hallway with me?”

“No, I’ve got to stay isolated, Patrick. Do you understand, this is already all my fault, but it will be even _more_ my fault if I get you sick. And, I mean, your lungs, they’re the moneymakers, we can’t have anything happen to _them_.”

Patrick doesn’t point out that Pete had plenty of opportunity to get him sick before they knew he was sick. He just tries to appreciate the joke with a little smile, and he silently vows not to take his mood out on Pete anymore, because that’s not fair, Pete has enough to deal with, and it’s way more than Patrick has to deal with.

So Patrick just says, “Right, yes, but this is what I mean,” and carries the Facetime call to the hallway. Tennyson, from his bed, looks curiously through the open doorway at him, as Patrick makes himself an elaborate sleeping nest. He says to Tennyson, “Can you open your window for me, Whitman?”

Tennyson scrambles to open the window.

Patrick tests his blanket nest, and sets his phone up next to him, facing Tennyson so they can see each other. “You should get into bed, too,” Patrick tells Pete. “All of the Wentzes should get into bed and I’ll sing a lullaby.”

Pete smiles and obediently gets into bed. Tennyson snuggles down expectantly.

Patrick sings a lullaby, hesitant through his mask, but good enough to send his Wentzes off to sleep. He didn’t actually expect that to work, but he sits in a silent house watching his two most beloved people sleep and thinks, _Huh_.

 _This could be worse_ , he thinks. And he’s been thinking it all day but all the other times, he’s been thinking it with wild desperation, like, trying to convince himself of it. Knowing it objectively but making his emotions _feel_ it were two very different things. Knowing that it could be worse – knowing that so many people all over the country have it _so much fucking worse_ than two privileged millionaires in a house with a beloved and healthy child who, once these ten days are over, they’ll be able to smother in kisses again – like, knowing that hasn’t helped Patrick feel any less keenly how much he’s missing smothering him in kisses _now_.

But sitting in the hallway, listening to his Wentzes sleep, he feels his heart slot into place: _Things could be so much worse than this._

“I love you both,” he says into the darkness, and then ends the Facetime call with Pete to preserve their phone batteries.

When he settles into his pile of blankets to sleep, it’s not as uncomfortable as he thought it was going to be, and he feels very honored when Bella comes over to curl up next to him.

***

“How’s Pete?” his mother asks, the very picture of concern.

Patrick is folding laundry. Part of the very glamorous rock-star life he leads. He matches two pairs of socks and says, “Physically perfectly fine, thank God. Emotionally, I don’t know. Tired. And we’re only on day fucking two.”

“I know. I can’t imagine.” His mother is appropriately sympathetic, and Patrick appreciates it. Not that everyone he’s spoken to hasn’t been sympathetic, but it’s different when your mom consoles you. “How’s Tennyson?”

“Hanging in there.” Patrick sighs. “He’s really upset but I can’t make it better so we’re just…being really upset, I don’t know.”

“How are _you_?” his mother asks.

Patrick folds underwear and says, “I’m fine.”

“Really?” his mother counters knowingly. “Because that’s not what Pete thinks.”

Patrick stops folding underwear, frowning. “How do you know what Pete thinks?”

“He called me.”

“He _called_ you?”

“Yes. He has my number. We’re allowed to speak directly without you being the intermediary.”

“No, I know, I…” Patrick knows this, yes, of course, but still, it never occurred to him that it actually _happens_. “What did Pete say?”

“That he’s worried about you. He says that you’ve been the glass-half-full member of the family this whole pandemic and that’s a lot and he’s worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” Patrick says automatically. “I’m just, you know, tired. I’m… Look, I know Pete is scared and Tennyson is scared and—”

“It’s okay for you to be scared, too,” his mother informs him.

“No, I know, but the thing is, I’m not sure ‘scared’ is the right word for how I feel. I think I’m… I think I’m angry. I’m trying not to be, but I am.”

“Angry at Pete?”

“No. I’m really not angry at Pete at all. I’m angry at this virus. It’s like I was holding it together this whole time. Like, just barely, but I was doing it. I was managing everything. I was making everything be bearable because I have Pete and I have Tennyson and Pete’s right, they were my glass half-full, and I know that I still have them, I do, but it feels like I don’t and I can’t and all of a sudden everything is unbearable, everything, all of it, not just Pete in isolation freaking out for the next ten days, not just my ten-year-old son spending Christmas alone, like, _everything_ , like, Pete sitting there racking up negative tests but none of them mean anything and if the testing is that useless how are we ever going to get back to seeing each other and I kept thinking there were things in our control and that if we followed the rules we’d be okay but I didn’t let them do anything fun for months and months and we still ended up _here_ so what even was the point and nothing is in our control and I miss you and I miss all of my friends and I miss _concerts_ , like, I don’t know, I’m having a nervous breakdown.” Patrick shakes his head and folds a towel.

“You’re just grieving, Patrick. That’s all you’re doing.”

“Nobody died.”

“Life did. A little bit. Concerts did. Coming home for Christmas did. Your faith in your plan of attack did. Getting to hug Tennyson did. There are all sorts of deaths, Patrick. It’s grief, what you’re feeling. It’s a process. You’ve got to let yourself go through it.”

Patrick puts the towel down. He looks at his mother on the phone. He says, “Huh.”

She says wisely, “Yes. Exactly.”

“That makes sense,” Patrick says thoughtfully. Grief can’t be pushed aside easily, his mother’s right. Grief can’t be reasoned away. Grief has to be processed, yes.

“We miss you so much right now,” his mother says.

“I know,” Patrick replies. “Me, too. _Please_ stay safe.” He cannot handle any more positive tests, he thinks. He can’t even handle the negative ones anymore.

***

Patrick is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor trying to put a chair together.

Luckily Tennyson is sound asleep and Pete is still in isolation, so it’s a rare moment from the recent past when Patrick is mask-free. Patrick is mask-free and he’s opened some really good cognac because, what the fuck, it’s Christmas Eve, he deserves something special, especially since he’s got to do all the Santa gifts by himself.

The chair is a gaming chair. Tennyson is going to love it. If Patrick can put it together. “Whose idea was it to get him a gaming chair?” Patrick asks, frowning at the directions.

“Don’t look at the directions,” Pete says, from the tablet Patrick has propped up on the coffee table.

“Pete, the directions are supposed to help me—”

“They lie. Do it by instinct.”

“I don’t have an instinct for gaming chair construction,” Patrick grumbles.

Pete says, “He asked for it. How were we not going to get him it when he asked for it? How we could do that, with everything we _can’t_ give him this year?” Pete is silent for a second. “Plus it’s probably the last year he’s going to believe in Santa.”

Patrick looks up from his construction. “Don’t say that.”

Pete looks morose. Patrick dropped him off a bottle of Merlot that he’s working his way through mournfully. “This was always a bonus year, I couldn’t believe we made it this far, and now it’s his last year and I’m fucking…stuck in this room and not even…” Pete makes vague gestures, drinks his wine.

Patrick stops feeling sorry for himself, because yeah, Pete’s got it way worse right now, Patrick has to remember that. He leaves off the chair construction to focus on Pete for a little while, stretching out on the floor and bringing the tablet over to keep him company, propping it on the leg of the coffee table. “Did you call my mom and tell her you were worried about me?” he asks. Patrick hasn’t asked about this before because it never seemed the right time, never a moment of peace in the frantic standstill panic of waiting for the other shoe to drop and still trying to prepare for some kind of imitation of Christmas.

“Yeah,” Pete answers.

“Why?”

“I was worried about you.”

“I’m worried about _you_.”

“Yeah, I know. Everyone’s worried about me, I’ve got to make sure you’ve got people worried about you, too. You can’t just worry about everyone else, you know.”

“It feels like it’s my job right now,” Patrick admits.

“Uh-huh. I know. So my job is worrying about _you_.”

“And playing dirty and getting my mother in on the job?” says Patrick.

Pete scoffs. “Oh, please, I was apprenticed to your mother in the Worrying Over Patrick business. She didn’t need me to call her to get in on the job. She was already well on the job. Sometimes it’s just nice to call her and be like, ‘Patrick isn’t taking care of himself because he’s taking care of everyone else,’ and she’s just like, ‘Ugh, again?’ and that’s nice and we vent a little about how annoyingly perfect you are.”

Patrick makes an eloquent face at Pete and sips his cognac.

Pete laughs. “Anyway, did she make you feel better?”

“A little,” Patrick grumbles. “Whatever.”

Pete laughs again. Then he changes the subject. “I’m thinking of dyeing my hair blonde. An isolation celebration.”

“I support this.”

“You could go for, like, green or something.”

“No, thank you.”

Pete chuckles. “I also ordered a chicken nugget body pillow.”

“A what?”

“It looked cool. And I’ve been very bored.”

“I’ve been compulsively donating to random GoFundMes,” Patrick admits.

“Of course you have,” Pete says, looking very fond.

Patrick sips his cognac. “I just feel like…everything is so much, all the time. And we have it _so incredibly easy_. What is wrong with me that I…find it hard?”

“Don’t even ask that question, Patrick,” Pete says softly. “That’s not a question you should ask. That’s not how anything about the world works. And you know that, most of the time. You’re the one who tells me that, most of the time.”

Patrick looks at him over Facetime. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You can know something intellectually but not know it emotionally.”

That’s true. Patrick is always telling Pete something along those lines. It’s not often he has to be given the pep talk, but he appreciates Pete stepping up for it. “Thank you,” he says.

“Anytime.” Pete smiles cheekily. “Want to have phone sex?”

Patrick knows it’s an attempt by Pete to lighten the mood, but Patrick still feels heavy. He says truthfully, “Not really. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I was just trying to make you laugh.”

“I know I’m weird about sex,” Patrick says, because Pete keeps asking for phone sex and Patrick keeps saying no. Granted, Pete is always asking playfully but Patrick still keeps saying no, and he feels bad about that.

“You’re not,” Pete tells him firmly. “Stop it. You’re not.”

“I just want to be able to _touch_ you,” Patrick explains helplessly. “I don’t want to be alone for it.”

“It’s fine, Patrick,” Pete says. “ _It’s fine_. Please tell me that you never have sex with me out of an obligation to me. Please. We never have to do it if you don’t want to.”

“No, I always want to,” Patrick replies. “Just not like this.”

“That’s fair,” Pete agrees. “I get that. I’ve only ever been teasing when I say it. I’ve only ever been wanting to make you smile. I’ll stop.”

“I actually do really miss sex with you,” Patrick informs him. “Just so you know.”

Pete smiles. “Thank you. Right back at you.”

“You’re literally in a room on the second floor of the same house I’m in right this moment, and I’m literally talking to you, and I still miss you _so_ much.”

“Same. I miss you desperately even though we talk all the time. I mean, the only person I talk to more often than you is the Department of Health asking me if I’ve gotten sick yet.”

Patrick laughs. “Yeah, it’s a lot, right? I always feel like I’m letting them down when I tell them I feel fine.”

“Me, too. I’m a huge disappointment to them. Five negative tests and no symptoms, I’m a failure at Covid.”

“No, you’re a success, I bet they wish everyone was like you.”

“By the time this is all over, me and Nancy are gonna be besties.”

“Nancy?”

“She’s my DOH contact. We’re friends now.”

“Huh. I just get sent a text every day asking me if I have any symptoms. No one calls me, I don’t have a ‘contact.’”

Pete shrugs. “It must be because I’m the one who tested positive? I don’t know, my friend Nancy calls me daily. As soon as this whole pandemic thing is over, I’m inviting her over for dinner.”

“Yeah?” A thought occurs to Patrick. “Did you tell her we were married?”

“What? No. Huh? Why? Do you think I should?” Pete looks quizzical.

“No, I don’t know, the Department of Health kept calling you my husband when they talked to me. I don’t really get why, I was wondering if you said that, but I didn’t know why you would have.”

Pete looks thoughtful. “I don’t think I did…”

He sounds like he’s seriously trying to remember, which gives Patrick pause. “Do you…often tell people I’m your husband?” Considering they’re not actually married, that would…surprise him.

“No,” Pete answer, “but maybe I talk about you in a way that people would draw conclusion. I mean, we live together, and I’m crazy in love with you, so, like, I probably talk about you like you’re my husband.”

Pete looks unconcerned about this, like it’s no momentous thing for people to think they’re married.

Patrick is still considering it when he finally tumbles into bed that night, after finishing setting up the Santa gifts all by himself. Patrick feels like it took him so long to get everything ready, he’ll be lucky to get twenty minutes of sleep before Tennyson starts the day. He curls up in his sleeping nest in the hallway, an arrangement that is an enormous comfort to both him and Tennyson – possibly a bigger comfort to him than to the ten-year-old, he admits. He’s just not used to sleeping without someone else’s breaths nearby anymore.

He’s exhausted, and he doesn’t want to waste the little sleeping time he’s going to get lying awake thinking about people thinking he’s married to Pete, but hey, apparently this is what his brain is going to do. So he lets it. He lets it wanders down this path, pressing at the idea of it experimentally, like a bruise, to see how far he can go before he flinches.

It turns out Patrick is entirely unflinching about this, but then, he would have expected that, had he stopped to think about it. Their lives have just been so busy that he’s never stopped to think about it before. But yeah. Getting married. Like…that should have happened a long time ago.

Patrick tosses and turns in his sleeping nest. Tennyson and Bella both breathe heavily from the bedroom. In the living room below him, the Christmas tree twinkles. Patrick left the lights on as a gesture toward a festive Christmas, toward a stupid idea of this being a special night when nothing has really changed about their situation. He looks through the wrought-iron railing that overlooks the living area and stares at the lights so long they blur into indistinguishable brightness.

***

Tennyson wakes him by pouncing on him, and they’re supposed to be in isolation and definitely not touching each other, but it’s Christmas morning and Tennyson’s ten years old and he whispers fiercely to Patrick, “Come down and see what Santa left,” and Patrick doesn’t have the heart to shove him away. He doesn’t pull him closer but he does let himself ruffle Tennyson’s hair, because he’s really missed touching Tennyson these past few days. At least Tennyson is a well-trained child of the pandemic who’s wearing a mask for this interaction.

Patrick whispers back, “Don’t touch anything, I’ll wake your dad.”

Tennyson nods and runs over to the top of the staircase, then runs back and hisses, “I think there’s a new gaming chair!”

Patrick smiles behind his own mask and, yawning, calls Pete. Outside, dawn is more of a hope than a definite occurrence at the moment.

Pete picks up with a sleepy, “Fuck, is it already Christmas morning?”

“Get your ass out of bed and come watch your kid open Christmas presents,” Patrick commands him.

“I’m not supposed to—”

“Wear a mask and sit at the top of the stairs and I’m going to take advantage of the fact that we’re in fucking _California_ right now and open up all of the doors and windows of the house to get fresh air in. How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Pete answers.

“Then this is what we’re doing,” Patrick decides. He’s the worst, he thinks. He’s weak and reckless. He still opens up all the doors and windows so that Pete can sit at the top of the stairs and he tells himself that’s good enough: good enough for the pandemic, and good enough for Pete and Tennyson’s emotional health. (It’s probably not good enough for either, but it’s the best he can manage.)

He watches Tennyson’s present demolishing from the kitchen, making coffee and pancakes and listening to Tennyson and Pete interact. Although they Facetime Pete pretty much constantly, Patrick feels like this live interaction, even socially distanced as it is, is different. Pete sounds more animated than Patrick’s heard him in days as he enthuses with Tennyson over his gifts. It’s good. Patrick knows Pete is worried about him but that leaves Patrick free to worry about Pete, and he’s glad to hear him sound so much like himself, like, if Patrick wasn’t wearing a mask, he could almost convince himself it was a normal Christmas.

The sun is up by the time Tennyson is done opening presents. Patrick is bleary-eyed and exhausted, despite all the coffee he’s ingested. This is the point in the day when Pete would usually let him take a nap, Patrick thinks. Pete would watch the kid and Patrick would sleep and wake up with pants on at four in the afternoon and it would be glorious.

Now Patrick doesn’t really want to go sleep in his empty bed, and he’s not sure it would even help with the exhaustion he’s drowning under.

He sits on the first step of the staircase and looks up at Pete, sitting at the top.

“You look like shit,” Pete tells him.

“Merry Christmas, asshole,” Patrick replies, and tosses him a middle finger for good measure.

Pete laughs.

Patrick leans his head against the railing and closes his eyes.

“Have you heard from Joe and Andy?” Pete asks.

“I shut my phone off. I was sick of everyone’s ‘merry Christmas exclamation point’ texts.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete says.

“Not your fault,” Patrick says, short and heavy, because what else is there to say?

Tennyson is saying, “Patrick, if I try to do this Lego Star Wars thing on the floor, do you think Bella will eat the Legos?”

“Yes,” Patrick says without opening his eyes.

“I didn’t get you anything for Christmas,” Pete says suddenly from the top step.

“That’s okay,” Patrick assures him.

“I was so focused on Tennyson—and then the whole test thing happened.”

“Yeah, the whole test thing happened,” Patrick agrees drily.

There’s a moment of silence. Tennyson is shrieking at Bella to drop the Lego because Tennyson ignored Patrick’s very good advice about the Legos.

Pete says, “You totally got me something for Christmas, didn’t you, you obnoxious organized motherfucker?”

Patrick chuckles. “Of course I got you something for Christmas, idiot. But I’m not giving it to you now. It isn’t really Christmas.”

There’s another moment of silence. Tennyson apparently retrieved the Lego from Bella because there’s no more shrieking.

Pete says, “Yeah. I hear you.”

***

On New Year’s Eve, at 11:55 pm, Pete steps out of isolation. He bounces down the staircase to where Patrick is sprawled on the couch, a bottle of champagne on the coffee table next to him.

Patrick smiles and says, “You’re five minutes early.”

Pete says, “Shut up, the coronavirus doesn’t know,” and pounces on Patrick.

Patrick finds himself with a bundle of Pete on top of him for the first time in ten days, and here’s the thing: This was Pete’s whole plan, this romantic New Year’s Eve thing, this ringing-in-the-new-year together to celebrate isolation being over, and Patrick thought it was a really good plan and he was, _of course_ , looking forward to it, and now that it’s here—

\--Patrick is crying. He is literally. Fucking. Crying.

“Hey,” Pete says, sounding alarmed. “Hey, hey, hey.” He brushes his fingers across Patrick’s eyes and cheekbones, apparently trying to catch the tears.

Patrick shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“ _Patrick_ ,” Pete says, and kisses his wet eyelashes. “It’s over now,” he whispers in Patrick’s ear.

And it isn’t, not really, and Patrick feels like he doesn’t know when it will ever really be over, and he feels panicked if he thinks too much about that.

And then Pete whispers, “I’m here. I’m right here,” and _that_ is true, and that is all Patrick can ever ask for, the present moment with Pete, so he holds him very close, and when the ball drops on repeat in the empty Times Square from three hours earlier, Pete murmurs, “Happy New Year, baby,” and kisses him and kisses him to make up for every kiss Patrick didn’t get in the past ten days.

***

Probably a normal person would have sex with their significant other they haven’t gotten to touch in ten days. Patrick doesn’t want to have sex. Patrick wants to burrow against Pete, inhale him, listen to his breaths heavy against him. His bed isn’t empty anymore, and Patrick is half-asleep by the time he finishes pulling the covers up over them.

“Can we have sex later?” he mumbles into Pete’s chest. He pulled Pete’s t-shirt up so he could get directly at his skin, the tattoos he’s missed the sight of, the scratch of chest hair he wants to rub his own stubbled cheek against.

“We can have sex whenever you want,” Pete says, his fingers threading through Patrick’s hair. “But also, Patrick, you’ve been taking care of everyone, just rest now. Go to sleep, okay?”

“I haven’t been taking care of you, you’ve been a room all by yourself,” Patrick protests sleepily.

“You were taking care of me more than you realize. Go to sleep, babe. I’m going to handle everything for a bit.”

That is, like, the best goddamn Christmas gift of all time, Patrick thinks, right before he falls asleep.

He wakes up to an empty bed and for a moment he sits up in a panic, worried he dreamed everything about the night before. And then there’s Tennyson’s voice from downstairs, pitched high in enthusiasm, and Pete’s voice rumbles in answer, low and warm and amused, and Patrick looks at the clock and it is _noon_. It is fucking _noon_. Patrick slept until _noon_. Patrick cannot remember the last time he did that. Certainly not in this house where there’s a kid to get to school in the mornings, virtual or not.

Patrick gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom, thinking a shower will wake him up, and on the bathroom counter are piles of t-shirts. No, seriously, at least fifty t-shirts. All in muted color tones, unexceptionable blacks and maroons and navy blues. Patrick rubs his eyes under his glasses but the shirts are still there when he refocuses his gaze.

Patrick laughs, and it’s like that laugh lifts a thousand-pound weight off his diaphragm. Patrick laughs and feels _joy_ , because look at his life, look how good it is, they survived a positive Covid test and Pete Wentz has bought him fifty t-shirts for Christmas.

He’s giving Pete a really good blowjob later as a thank-you for this, Patrick thinks.

Downstairs, Pete and Tennyson are watching some YouTuber fill his house with packing peanuts. Tennyson is cuddled close to Pete. Wentzes need touch in a way Patrick doesn’t experience, and even _he_ couldn’t wait to touch Pete. He wonders when Tennyson will ever let Pete go.

Pete looks at Patrick over Tennyson’s head and says, “Yo,” like this is just any day in their lives and not the momentous Pete’s Return day.

“Did you buy me, like, fifty t-shirts from Target?” Patrick asks.

“And a couple from Kohl’s. Merry Christmas.”

“I thought you forgot to buy me a Christmas gift.”

“I did. And then Target and Kohl’s put everything on sale. Three for twenty. I was bargain-hunting.”

“And all I got you was some stupid art,” Patrick says casually.

Pete perks up with interest.

“Hang on, hang on,” Tennyson interrupts, “watch this guy, he’s going to dive into these packing peanuts, watch, watch.”

“That doesn’t seem safe,” Patrick remarks, watching the guy as commanded. “Yeah, that’s definitely not safe. That is not allowed in our house, got it, Dickinson?”

“Got it,” Tennyson says distractedly, way more focused on the YouTube video than Patrick’s mother-henning.

“Let’s make Christmas cookies,” Pete announces, getting off the couch. “We were waiting for you.” He gives Patrick a light kiss on his way past him and Patrick thinks, _Look at that, you can just get kissed again like it’s no big deal_.

“Oh, yeah!” Tennyson pauses the video and leaps off the couch. “I forgot!” He dashes off into the kitchen.

Patrick tags behind them uncertainly. “Is it safe? I didn’t understand the rules around this part. Are Tennyson and I supposed to be in the same room together? Or are we still quarantined from each other?”

“Wear a mask and stay on opposite sides of the island,” Pete says. “I will be your germ buffer.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Patrick says.

“Oh, suddenly you’re Mr. Science?” says Pete, and tosses him an apron, grinning. “Should I just call you Dr. Fauci?”

“Patrick, it’s totally cool, I’m going to wear _two_ masks, and we have been waiting forever to make Christmas cookies,” Tennyson explains to him.

He looks so hopeful, and Patrick is so tired of disappointing this kid. So he puts on his mask and he stands at one end of the island and Tennyson stands at the other and they make Christmas cookies.

It actually feels festive.

***

Pete is laying on the floor, his shoulder on Patrick’s socked feet. Patrick wiggles his toes against him and looks down at him. There’s a bottle of wine open on the coffee table next to him, and Pete is balancing a half-full glass on his chest, gazing up at the ceiling reflectively. Patrick munches on one of their Christmas cookies and says, “It’s good to have you back.”

Pete looks at him upside-down and smiles. “It’s good to _be_ back. You look hot in that t-shirt I bought you, too.”

Patrick shakes his head fondly and wiggles his toes again. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Did you like the shirts, though?”

“I mean, they’re perfect and hilarious, so yes. It was a fun throwback to those Christmases when you used to buy me trucker hats at sketchy gas stations in the middle of nowhere and call them Christmas gifts.”

Pete looks pleased with himself. “Yeah, I’ve always been full of the Christmas spirit.”

“Totally, anyone who listens to our Christmas song would have to agree.”

Pete laughs. “So where are you hiding my artwork, sugar?”

“Your artwork?” Patrick says innocently.

Pete rolls himself up to his knees, putting his glass on the table and grinning at him, a sharp, Cheshire cat, grin-with-purpose. He says, “Yes, my artwork that you bought me for Christmas.”

“Did I buy you any artwork for Christmas?” Patrick pretends to muse thoughtfully, just because he knows it’s going to make Pete laugh.

It does. He says, leaning over Patrick, “Look at you, pretending you don’t have a Christmas gift for me. Very sus, Patrick.”

“Christ, I watched Tennyson play _so much_ Among Us with his friends these past ten days,” says Patrick. 

“He told me. He had the best time he could have had, Patrick. I’m so glad you were here with him. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, I let the kid play videogames and watch YouTube videos, I did hardly any parenting.”

“You’re always downplaying your parenting contributions. I’m telling you, very sus, Patrick.” Pete smiles at him and presses his face into the curve of Patrick’s neck.

Patrick thinks of his most recent parenting contribution, forbidding diving into packing peanuts in their house. “You would have totally been a YouTuber if you’d been born twenty years later,” Patrick notes.

“Oh, yeah, _totally_ ,” Pete agrees, sounding amused. “One hundred percent.”

“Your art’s upstairs in the bedroom,” Patrick says.

“He was scared, and you made him feel safe,” Pete says. “And I was scared for my kid, but I knew I didn’t have to be, because you were out here taking care of him. So. That’s what you did. Thanks.”

Pete settles heavily against Patrick, and they breathe together for a moment.

And then Pete says, “Okay, I want to see my art.”

***

The art has been hidden under the bed forever. Patrick happened upon it one night months ago, scrolling aimlessly through the internet during _Tiger King_ (a show Pete had watched avidly and Patrick was thoroughly indifferent about). He ordered the art, frame and all, and hid it under their bed, where Pete was sure to never look.

And, indeed, Pete’s jaw drops when Patrick crouches and pulls the giftwrapped package out. “Hang on,” he says, “how long has that been under the bed?”

Patrick smiles, always delighted to surprise Pete, and shrugs nonchalantly.

“Have you just had this gift under this bed this whole time witnessing our sexual shenanigans?” Pete asks.

“No, because art doesn’t witness anything,” Patrick responds primly. “Open it.”

Pete starts tearing into the giftwrap. “How many things do you hide under the bed?”

“Mostly dust bunnies because we’re the world’s worst housekeepers.”

Pete makes a who-cares sound, and then falls silent, staring at the painting. Patrick knows that Pete would say that he loves anything Patrick gets him, but Patrick can tell when Pete really loves something, and Pete really loves the painting. Patrick knew he would, and he’s proud of himself for knowing Pete that well. He’s known him that well for twenty years now, but it’s still some magnificent thing, that the impossibly hot, impossibly cool boy who showed up at his house and wanted him to be in a band is the person he now knows best in the whole world. Is the person he loves most in the whole world. And who loves him back. That boy, the one with the swagger and the real band, who promised the moon and the stars and Patrick thought at the time, _Yeah, okay, sure thing, dreamer boy_ , and then that boy…did it. That boy did everything he said he would and so much more, loved Patrick, gave him this life, and this family, and it’s been a rough ten days but here he is, in a new year, still standing with Pete.

He wants to get married, he thinks. This clear-cut brilliant thought he’s been thinking throughout this interminable ordeal. Why aren’t they already married? 

Pete looks up from the art, smiling. “Patrick,” he says, in that very soft way that only he ever says Patrick’s name. “When did you buy this?”

“Ages ago,” Patrick says. “I saw it and I thought you would love it so—”

“Patrick,” says Pete, and surges up and kisses him. “Of course you did,” he mumbles into the kisses. “Of course you did. Patrick, Patrick, _my_ Patrick, you were seventeen years old and all you ever did was take care of me and you’re still just taking care of me, every second.” Pete, at the end of his kisses, nudges Patrick back, onto the bed.

Patrick, kiss-dizzy, goes, and blinks up at Pete. “I think you are definitely not remembering accurately what I was like at 17.”

Pete grins and straddles him on the bed. “I remember _very_ accurately what you were like at 17, you delicious piece of jailbait.”

“Shut up, I was a Schrodinger Patrick still,” Patrick protests, feeling himself blush.

Pete looks down at him thoughtfully. “Yeah, but you were always _my_ Schrodinger Patrick. The whole time. You really were. You were my Patrick before I knew how much you were my Patrick. You know?”

It’s a Pete riddle, but those are Patrick’s specialty. “I do know,” he says softly. “I was always yours and you were always mine. I knew that way before you did.”

“I’m so sorry I put you through all of that,” Pete says achingly. “I’m so sorry I put you through the last ten days.”

“I’m so sorry I didn’t keep you safe. I didn’t let you do anything you wanted to do the entire year and in the end I still didn’t keep you safe, I just…made you unhappy.”

“Patrick, you have never made me unhappy for a single second. Not one. Never, ever think that. You’re the thing that makes me happiest in the world.” Pete pauses. “Aside from Tennyson.”

Patrick smiles. “That’s fair. Tennyson is Tennyson, who can compete with Tennyson?”

“The only person who can give Tennyson Wentz a run for his money is Patrick Stump.”

“That is the highest compliment you have ever paid me,” Patrick says.

Pete is serious looking down at him, his fingertips tracing over Patrick’s cheekbones, skirting over his glasses to brush at the hair swept over his forehead. He says, his voice choked, “I missed you so much. I missed you _so_ much. It was like how I used to feel on stage, when you would be way over there, and it was only a few feet but it felt unbearable, how much I just needed to be right up against you, just to touch you, just to make sure you were real. I couldn’t make sure you were real. I couldn’t make sure all of this was real. It could have been a fever dream, the whole thing, all this time together, it felt like you were a Schrodinger Patrick again, beyond my reach, untouchable.”

Patrick lifts his hands up to cup fiercely around Pete’s face. “I am right here. I have been right here the entire time. Fuck Covid, I am never letting you go ten days without touching me ever again.” He pulls Pete down into a kiss, ferocious and demanding, and suddenly he wants him very badly, wants the gasping rush of how he knows he can make Pete feel and how he knows Pete can make him feel.

They fumble with their clothing, like they’re oddly out of practice, like taking a t-shirt off another person is something you can forget how to do, but Pete’s hands on him are definitely still in game-time condition, everything just exactly how Patrick likes.

“Look at that,” Pete pants, his hand relentless on Patrick, as Patrick throws his head back and lifts his hips to meet his rhythm. “We don’t miss a beat.”

“Is that a drumming pun?” Patrick manages. “Because fuck you.”

“Shut up, my bad puns totally turn you on,” Pete replies, and executes that clever little move he does that always makes Patrick come.

It’s the Pete hand move that makes him come, not the pun, just to be clear.

Patrick is boneless and catching his breath and he makes some aborted gesture toward Pete’s neglected dick and says something like, “I meant to—”

“Shh shh,” Pete says, “let me do all the work, you’ve been doing all the work for days now,” and brings himself off using the mess on Patrick’s chest, which is disgusting and not hot, totally.

Pete does more of the work, cleaning them up, and Patrick is deeply content, and simultaneously oddly anxious. It’s a weird tension warring within him.

Pete collapses into the bed next to him, curls up against his side. His hair gets in Patrick’s mouth the way it always does.

Patrick blurts out, “I think we should get married.”

“Yeah,” Pete says sleepily. “I was thinking the same thing.”

Patrick is relieved. “You were?”

“Mmm. I kept thinking that my will would have sent Tennyson to my parents, if something had happened to me. How did I not change that? We’ve got to fix that, so he stays with you. And I never even put your name on this house. Christ, Patrick, I would have left you with such a mess if I died of Covid. We’ve got to get our house in order.” Pete brushes a kiss over his chest and then breathes deep, like now they can go to sleep.

Patrick frowns up at the ceiling, and then he sits up, jostling Pete off of him.

Pete peers at him curiously. “What—”

“That’s not why I want to get married,” Patrick says.

“Huh?”

“I don’t want to get married because it’s _practical_ , because you want to make sure I take care of our kid and live in our house.”

Pete looks like he’s having a hard time following the conversation. “But don’t you want to—”

“I want to get married because I _want to get fucking married_. Because the Department of Health called you my husband and I couldn’t get it out of my head the past ten days. Why aren’t you my husband? Why can’t I call you my husband? Why aren’t we married?”

“I don’t know.” Pete’s expression has shifted, like he’s caught up and is now trying to process. He looks both bewildered and earnest. “I didn’t think you meant—I mean, marriage wasn’t something I—You want to get married?”

“I want to get married.”

“I didn’t know that you did.”

“I do.”

“I didn’t know that you _cared_.”

“It turns out I do.”

“Okay,” Pete says after a moment. “Let’s get married.”

It sounds like a shrug. Patrick frowns harder. “Don’t just say that because—”

“I’m saying it because I love you and I am definitely spending the rest of my life with you. I’m saying it because, dude, _we’re already married_. Have you not noticed? You asked me if I told the Department of Health we were married and like, _yeah_ , I did. What else was I supposed to say? They asked me who I lived with and my first instinct was to say ‘my Patrick,’ and then I thought, well, _that’s_ stupid, they’re already going to think I’m an idiot for somehow catching Covid while barely leaving my house, I can’t also say that I live with my son and my Patrick, and so I said you were my husband.”

Patrick stares at him. “But…I asked you if you told them I was your husband and you said no!”

Pete looks sheepish. “I didn’t want you to think I’m an idiot, too.”

“Pete, I _know_ you are an idiot,” Patrick replies, exasperated.

This startles a laugh out of Pete. “Okay, yes, fair. I guess I couldn’t figure out if you were upset I would do that or not, and getting into all that felt like something I couldn’t handle while being isolated in my room worried I was about to die or get you so sick that _you_ would die, during our son’s last Santa Christmas. So…I lied.”

“And I didn’t even notice you lying,” Patrick marvels, amazed, because he knows Pete so well now, he usually catches on to something like that.

“Neither of us was our sharpest the past ten days,” Pete points out.

Which is true. Patrick was undeniably a wreck.

“Okay,” Pete says, when Patrick stays silent, considering all of this. “So it’s settled then. Let’s get married.” He cuddles Patrick aggressively, until Patrick relaxes into the familiar shape of Pete against him.

Patrick says, still stuck on this revelation, “Why didn’t you just say you lived with your boyfriend?”

“I don’t think of you as a boyfriend,” Pete replies, voice muffled into Patrick’s chest. “Do you think of me as a boyfriend?”

And Patrick…doesn’t. Patrick never has. Patrick strokes his hand absently up and down Pete’s spine, Pete heavy against him. He thinks of every impossible thing they’ve been through together already, and how there’s absolutely nothing the world could throw at them that they wouldn’t also get through together. He says softly, “Yeah. Let’s get married.”

“Man, I am going to give you the most romantic proposal,” Pete mumbles, half-asleep.

“Can’t wait,” Patrick murmurs, resting his lips in the tangled mess of Pete’s hair. He really, really can’t wait for all of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, the "we're already married" bit is pretty much what happens in Nature & Nurture, BUT in my defense my goal is always to write couples who are basically already married by the time they figure out they should get married lolololol


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